


Gently

by untilthenightturnsred



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: F/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-30
Updated: 2015-04-30
Packaged: 2018-03-26 11:23:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3849100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/untilthenightturnsred/pseuds/untilthenightturnsred
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just another night stitching Matt Murdock up. One shot. Claire/Matt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gently

Claire walked into the room, tentatively surveying the damage. Matt was on the bed, passed out. Black eye. Bloodied side. Cuts, scrapes and bruises scattered over his body. Just one sock hanging pathetically onto his foot.

He was a mess. And she was back again, as promised, to stitch him up.

“I don’t want to fucking do this anymore, Matt,” she whispered to herself. She moved to the side of his bed and sat down, unpacking her medical kit. Gloves on. Time to begin touching him, but keeping her distance. 

It felt odd, examining his skin. Like he was just anyone she could come across on a random night shift. Claire tried to shift the thought out of her mind, to treat him as just another broken man she needed to save. Because it was her job. That was it.

But as she looked, eyes drifting over his chest, his bruised neck, his wounds, she found herself thinking about how Matt’s heightened senses might make the aches even more profound, more painful. How much more he might hurt than any other broken man. She shook her head, trying to physically expel any thoughts beyond the job at hand.

He’d called her that night, couldn’t speak at first. Just breathing. Then, gasps. 

“Claire. Claire. I fucked up…and…fuck…can you come over?”  
“I’m on my way.”

She felt tears well up in her eyes as she patched him up. It wasn’t fair. That Matt kept taking beatings, and so little felt like it was changing in Hell’s Kitchen. She didn’t want to tell him how bad it was getting at the hospital, the violence she saw. Maybe he caused some of it. 

Probably. Maybe she was patching him up some nights, and some evil bastards he battered the next. Maybe it was all getting too confusing. It wasn’t a world on fire she saw, but a world covered in blood, Matt’s and everyone else’s just blending together as she kept stitching and stitching and stitching.

As she placed a bandage on his side, Claire closed her eyes to keep the tears from falling. Matt’s hand moved onto hers.

“Claire…thanks.”  
“You say that every time.”  
“Yeah.”  
“What happened?” Claire asked, opening her eyes.  
“I heard you, trying…Not to cry.”  
“Your supersenses are the worst, Matt. Listen, I…You look real bad. I’ve still gotta do some stitches, so just – just don’t move.”

Claire moved fast. Sometimes she could feel Matt’s fingers graze her elbow as she stitched him up. It got her every time. Claire didn’t like it, but she wasn’t going to lie to herself. That it made her ache, just a bit.

“All done. You need — you really need to rest up this time, Matt. It’s…It’s almost as bad as that time you were gutted like a damn fish. But tonight, you wanna know what I found? I just found a pencil lodged into your side. What the fuck?”

“Yeah,” he gritted his teeth in pain with every word. “Real bad guy this one. He’s got good aim.”  
“I know there’s no point in saying it, but stay out of his line of fire, if you can. At least for the next few hours. You call me in the morning, ok?”  
“Yeah.”  
Claire packed her bag, sighing heavily. She felt Matt shift.  
“Can you not be an idiot, just once, Murdock?”  
“Only if you stay here,” he said, flashing that wry half-grin he had.  
“Matt…Don’t.”

She turned to look at him, but he was already out. Eyes shut, breathing softly. She threw her hands up slightly. And then moved to the foot of his bed. And put his other sock on for him.

She awoke with a start, forgetting where she was until she opened her eyes. The bright lights from the billboard outside. Matt’s apartment. His couch. That damn billboard, a stark reminder that for all his heightened senses, Matt was still blind. 

It would be light outside soon. She heard him stir, slightly, and walked over to his bed.

“Don’t you dare move, Matt.”  
“No plans to, if I’m honest. You… you stayed.”  
“You looked pretty bad.”  
“I’m feeling it.”

Claire sat down next to him, fingers grazing lightly over his body as she checked the bandages, the stitches, the wounds. She didn’t know why she’d stayed tonight. He looked bad most nights. She’d always left before.

Back to work. She looked up at his face to check the bruising. She liked that he never wore his sunglasses with her, knowing he felt so comfortable with her. She hated it, too, that it meant they didn’t hide anything from each other. They were always honest about who they were and where they stood. And they were also far too honest about how they both, sometimes, wished they weren’t so stuck in their damn ways.

She pushed the thought from her mind, replacing it with the image of the goddamn bloodied pencil she’d removed from his side just hours earlier. That’s the Matt she knew, the Matt who was lying there in front of her. She couldn’t afford to forget that.

“This is gonna hurt,” she warned, turning him sharply to check the puncture wound.  
“You could be a bit gentler, Claire,” he said, grimacing as she sat him up.  
“Don’t try your luck, Murdock. Got any other night nurses you know?”  
“Thanks, Claire. For patching me up. For sticking around. It feels like it’s getting bad again, like before.”

She saw the pain in his face. The determination. She knew things were only going to get worse. Sometimes, on those nights she was feeling particularly honest with herself, Claire would admit to herself she liked it when he called. Because she’d get to see him. Bloodied and broken, of course, but she’d get to see him. For a few moments, at least, but it was enough. 

But with everything she’d seen in the hospital during the last few weeks, each phone call tightened her chest. She’d been lulled into complacency with the ill-equipped criminals, with Matt’s toughness, by thinking of him only as Daredevil. By pushing him away. But things were changing out on the streets, putting the city and Matt — Matt, the bruised and desperate man in front of her, needing her help — in danger.

“This doesn’t change anything,” she said.  
“What? What doesn’t change anything?”

And then she gently kissed his chest, a scar from the first time she’d sewed him up.

“Claire…”

She breathed softly, a quiet warning that she wasn’t done. She bent and kissed his side, where the long, gnarled scar from Nobu’s hook remained. She remembered, vividly, patching it up twice, causing Matt pain as she tried to fix him. She let herself feel that, finally. Just this once.

Eyes closed, she listened to Matt’s breathing. Low and deep. Waiting for her, trusting her. Trusting her to hurt them both in this moment, with something they couldn’t ever really have. She kissed his shoulder, feeling with her lips the pain of the bruises in every intake of Matt’s breath.

Claire sighed, and for one brief, weak second nuzzled into his neck. Kissed it and pulled away. Opened her eyes. 

The sound of Matt’s breath hung in the air. Maybe hers did too.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have done that. I just… I don’t know.”  
“I’m grateful. I forget, you know… That there is gentleness in the world.”  
“You’re not a very good Catholic sometimes, Matt.”

Matt laughed — and like all of his laughs when she was around, Claire noticed he grimaced afterward. She started to move away. Time to go. 

Then she felt Matt’s hand on hers. “Let… Let me?”

Matt held her hand. Maybe, just once, Claire thought, they could be on the same page. She sat down on the bed, letting him caress her hands.

He took her fingers to his lips. Kissed each one. Softly. Gently. Thanking her for every stitch, she wondered — she hoped. She closed her eyes, letting herself feel close to him again. Just once. Just once before the light pierced the darkness.


End file.
